Business owners have to deal with a lot of the expenses related to running the company. They eventually start believing that doing everything alone is better than getting someone to do it for you. Simple everyday tasks like filing, noting down accounts, making invoices, keeping track of employee leaves, scheduling and creating posts for social media, and so on are all responsibilities spread throughout each team member. While this may save a lot of money, you waste time on menial services every marketer should outsource to a professional agency.
Outsourcing helps save time and money in the long term. Small and large companies that need to focus on increasing growth and productivity can benefit by outsourcing business services to professional firms and agencies. Start-ups and small businesses usually forget that while it is essential to save costs, time is more critical than saving money. It is prudent to spend a little on outsourcing and save vast amounts of money in the long term.
Initially, the term ‘Outsourcing’ nearly always causes stress and anxiety for business owners and start-ups. Outsourcing business activities and functions become one of the most challenging decisions that a business owner can take. Services every marketer should outsource can increase effectiveness and get a better return on investment (ROI).
Why Every Marketer Should Outsource: The Benefits
1. Customer Service
Customer Service is one of the most significant aspects of successfully running a business. Most marketing teams have to deal with a lot of feedback and criticism from customers and clients. Building a in-house team on the company payroll can be super expensive. You will also have to spend additional money on training and development, taking away time that could be put to better use.
It is best to outsource customer service and have them compile and report the data gathered. Not only will this save you time, but it also saves you money in hiring another person or a team. Most large companies outsource their customer service to professionals with readily available infrastructure.
2. Lowered Costs
If you have a retail company, you could outsource the manufacturing. Outsourcing helps lower operational and manufacturing costs. You would also save on warehousing, purchase of equipment, maintenance, and employment of skilled and technical staff. All these aspects together help save a lot of money in the long term. It is easier and cheaper to have a manufacturer make the products according to specifications. The same can be said of certain services.
Businesses in the service industry also prefer outsourcing to agencies that already have professionals on board. By doing this, you do not have to bear the cost of training and education. You can simply pay the hiring fee or retainer and put forth the instructions and specifications of the job.
3. Less Risk
Running a business is risky. You have to account for unavoidable strategic decisions that may be risky in the long term. Outsourcing any business activity comes with a certain amount of risk. In marketing, the risk is in executing and maintaining the same brand voice across social media and in front of clients and customers.
At such times, it is best to keep in mind that taking a slight risk and getting all the work outsourced will pay off in the end. When doing this, you should rely on highly experienced agencies that will deliver as promised. You should read the reviews, check online sites for referrals, and weigh the pros and cons before choosing a marketing agency that best suits your needs. The real risk is trying to save money by finalizing a cheaper, inexperienced agency and getting a bad bargain.
4. Productivity and Efficiency
Outsourcing simply means that, as a business owner, you are deciding to let a professional complete your tasks for you. Professional agencies can help compile data, increase efficiency, and get the work done in less time. Since agencies have professionals on their payrolls, you do not have to explain each aspect of the work and provide training. Professionals will complete the job with minimal questions and less hassle.
As we’ve mentioned earlier, if you are assured of an increase in efficiency and will get the work you need, you will free your time to get to other crucial tasks. An increase in your efficiency and the agency’s productivity is an excellent way forward for your business.
5. Make More Money
We understand why you may think this doesn’t add up. When actually, it does! Making more money doesn’t only mean looking at your expenses each second. It means finding avenues to make more money and expand your business. Outsourcing allows you to pay less to get the job done, and instead, save money.
Most businesses concentrate on cost-cutting methods to save money. They do not realize that to make money; you must spend it wisely. Personalized attention to customers will make more money since they will return to buy your product more often. Responding to new queries and initiating conversations will do the same. You can make more money by utilizing your resources to grow the business.
6. Outsourcing Keeps You Updated
Outsourcing social media marketing and digital marketing is excellent for business owners who find certain repetitive tasks frustrating or time-consuming. Outsourcing digital marketing to a marketing agency actually helps you stay on top of the game. Experienced digital marketing agencies are known to deliver excellent results.
They compile the data, quantify it, and make regular reports. Once you set the goals and explain your vision, you can sit down with them to finalize a marketing strategy. After this is done, you just have to sit back and concentrate on the brand name, value, awareness, and return on investment (ROI). It is the job of the digital marketing agency to keep you updated with all the trends, events, analyses, and future projections.
Which Are The 5 Services Every Marketer Should Outsource?
Digital marketing agencies can help you save tremendous amounts of money. They can create engaging content for mobile platforms, social media, websites, and videos and podcasts. The agency will help you build momentum for your brand, deepen the customer relationship, increase and improve brand name and value, and improve the business’s reputation with clients, customers, and stakeholders.
Aside from blogs and videos, marketing agencies can add excellent value to your business.
Let us look at five commonly outsourced marketing services to save money.
1. Market Research
Market research can take a lot of time and money. An experienced digital marketing agency can conduct a thorough study of your competitors, customers, and marketplace. The agency can help you identify customers’ needs and gaps in buyer behavior. The team can conduct a deep dive into your business’s unique selling proposition and gauge how you can defeat your competitors.
If you were to do this in-house, you would have to hire a team of researchers and marketers to conduct an analysis. Not only would this be expensive, but also tedious. It would take away a lot of your mind share and not allow you to focus on other tasks. Outsourcing to marketing agencies helps with digital marketing, paid ads, SEO, keyword research, blogging, Google, and social media analytics. Most marketing agencies also perform a SWOT (Strength, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) analysis to help with the strategizing and branding activities.
2. Creative Projects and Management
The compilation, production, editing, and subsequent marketing of content and materials are creative projects. These projects are used to circulate your brand value and story and capture the interest of your target audiences. Creative projects target audiences through social media, websites, emails, newsletters, apps, and more. Management of innovative projects is done through specific branding activities like campaigns to promote, build awareness, and generate leads.
This includes:
- Social media posting
- Organic keyword placements
- Email campaigns
- Newsletters
- Podcasts
- Guest blogging
- Link building
- Blog and article writing/ content development
- Citation management
- Fact-checking
- Infographic creation
- Viral trends spotting
- Monitoring “@” mentions and tracking alerts
- Conversion Rate Optimization
- Retargeting
Digital marketing teams have a lot of experienced professionals that strategize and execute large projects. These teams take care of the content creation, editing, copyrighting, and designing, along with the go-to-market strategies for each individual piece of writing. They also build different strategies for video, audio, and podcast-type content. Based on the direction you want to steer your brand, marketing agencies help improve public relations, communication with the target audience, and branding.
3. Marketing Planning and Strategy
Outsourcing the marketing planning and strategy is highly advantageous. Marketing agencies understand the need to reconstruct brands, improve logos, and turn the target audience towards a specific message or ideal. If the business is a start-up venture, a marketing agency can also help introduce the brand in the market and develop innovative ideas to execute the strategy in the least budget.
Marketing agencies help the business develop an approachable persona. If you are introducing a new product or service, the agency can create a need. This can further be used to generate leads. Nearly all planning and strategizing is done to increase market share and generate new leads, orders, and purchases. Marketing agencies can also devise growth strategies and create value propositions for your brand.
4. Marketing Operations
Most business owners do not realize how stressful marketing operations can be in the long term. The agency can optimize the marketing process, from report generation and strategizing to analytics. Outsourcing the functions to a marketing agency helps in project planning, strategizing, brand compliance checks, marketing technology management, and marketing performance measurement.
Since doing all this, and taking care of the social media posting can get time-consuming and expensive, an in-house marketing team may not be as successful as an outsourced team of experienced professionals. You would not need to invest in marketing software, checks, and measures or hire additional employees. As a business owner, you can save on all these costs and ensure that the operations run smoothly at all times.
5. SEO and Digital Advertising
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a crucial part of marketing. It helps in ensuring that your web pages rank higher than others on leading search engines. SEO requires in-depth knowledge of content strategy, keyword search, search engine algorithms, and technical requirements. SEO agencies help guide the website’s optimization and increase your chances of ranking higher on search engines. Search strategizing and compilation of data come with an additional cost like the purchase and maintenance of software.
Digital advertising through PPC (pay per click), paid ads, organic sharing, and follows can be pretty expensive. Hiring a full-time in-house employee to take care of all the digital advertising needs of the brand could become problematic since there is a lot of tracking and analytics to be done. Outsourcing digital advertising helps with price targeting, audience gathering, and significant savings.
How To Finalize The Right Digital Marketing Agency?
Once you understand which of the services to outsource, it is crucial to find your company’s right digital marketing agency. You should see the most cost-effective digital partners to help fulfill all your requirements.
1. Budget
You should set a minimum and maximum budget based on quotations received from multiple agencies. To do this, you should contact industry-specific agencies with experience. Once you have the quotes from a few, you should set your own budget before starting the negotiations.
Filter Agency Vista’s extensive network of 45.8K marketing agencies based on your budget size. There is also a detailed questionnaire available that provides assisted agency-matching to filter through our network and find the agency that best suits the business’s needs.
2. Requirements
Before you start hunting for a reputable digital marketing agency, it is best to identify the business marketing requirements. Digital marketing companies will offer you an entire buffet of services to increase your brand and market standing. You should select which of the services you require for your business. For example, the needs of a large, well-established company are different from those of a 1-year old start-up. B2B marketing campaigns also differ from B2C campaigns. You should only select those services which are critical to the marketing needs of your business.
Find The Perfect Marketing Agency using Agency Vista for Business
3. Referrals
When searching for an excellent agency to outsource, you should always try and opt for a referral. Many times, ex-clients are the most valuable people to give feedback about services. Referrals will also help you understand the style of working and the efficiency of the team. No one wants to finalize on an agency with no history of completing a project or one that has terrible online reviews. Doing a little homework in advance will help save a lot of time and money later.
4. Communication
Most businesses hire digital marketing agencies and do not know whom to contact for specific information. A good digital marketing agency will give you all the details before starting the work and assign a single point of contact who will oversee the entire marketing project. This is invaluable since you can save time on following up with each particular aspect of the outsourcing and simply communicate with one person. The single point of contact would also be the account manager.
Tips To Make Outsourcing Efficient
1. Be Selective
Being selective about which functions to outsource should always be the key. You should retain control over the tasks that do not require a marketing agency. You should also take time to decide the best course of action and strategize with the agency, only about the aspects you want. As the business owner, you must think of the future financial goals of the company before allowing the agency to have free rein.
2. Monitor Progress
Once you outsource the marketing needs, do not wholly neglect the progress. You should keep a watch over the broad quantifiable details like the total number of daily posts, PPC, daily conversions, and so on. You should also keep an eye on the brand voice and the market perception of the brand. Not only will this help you keep track, but it also give valuable feedback.
Final Thoughts
It doesn’t matter whether your business is a start-up or a large company. Outsourcing will help you control expenses and save vast amounts of money in the long term. Marketing expertise, ROI, cost-saving, and growth should be the significant aspects that you concentrate on during the initial meetings with a digital marketing agency.
Use the information and tips we have given you to make the right decision for your business requirements. The right fit for your company may not be the best one for someone else, so you should consider all aspects carefully before investing your time and money. When done correctly, outsource marketing can help turn the tide with competitors and raise your business to new heights.